


Don't Bother None

by egelantier



Series: drabbles and flashfics [22]
Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Crossover Pairings, F/M, Family, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-01-02 13:32:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelantier/pseuds/egelantier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of scattered Sleepy Hollow ficlets, all vaguely taking place inside the same universe for now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Bother None

**Author's Note:**

  * For [somebraveapollo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/somebraveapollo/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They grin at each other, bloody unrepentant, and in the end Eliot doesn't pull the last punch, but doesn't follow up on it, either.
> 
> (or: That One Time Eliot Spencer And Jenny Mills Went For The Same Artifact)

The girl isn't an amateur, Eliot will say that much - but she's not a full pro, either. There's this sheen of professional boredom that she lacks, somehow. So he gives her the courtesy of his all, flurry of punches and kicks and sweeps, and she matches them, move for move. They grin at each other, bloody unrepentant, and in the end Eliot doesn't pull the last punch, but doesn't follow up on it, either.

They end up laying on the floor companionably, after, sharing a smoke and maybe gearing up for round two, and Eliot says, "Do you have a name, stranger? Haven't seen you in the game yet."

"Jenny," she says, and he nods and tastes the name, pins it down to remember.

"Why do you need this thing, anyway? Ugly monkey, shitty owners."

"To save the world."

Eliot laughs. She plucks the cigarette out of his hand, and when she exhales, he turns over to catch the smoke from her lips.

When he wakes up, after, and she's gone with the artifact, he doesn't follow. It ends up badly for him, with a dungeon and a torture cell and several months of time lost, but for some reason he's never found it in himself to be bitter about it.

After all, the world continues to turn; whatever she needed it for, it must've worked.


	2. Cat Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenny is the one who hides a cat in the barn.

Jenny's the one who hides a cat in the barn. Abbie's dubious and worried, because she's pretty sure it's not something their foster parents of the moment would appreciate, but Jenny says, "It's snowing outside," and, well, fair's fair. So the cat stays in the barn, and Abbie ends up being tangled in a conspiracy of hiding her and bringing her scraps of their lunches and dinners, and, mostly, standing guard over Jenny communing with the cat.

(Jenny communes with the cat by laying very still next to her and staring at her intently. It's hilarious and a bit wonderful, and Abbie's pretty sure the cat only tolerates the attention because she made the connection that Jenny = barn = food).

The cat is nothing special, a grey tabby with a scarred ear, and while Abbie thinks she's pretty smart, she's neither beautiful not overly friendly. Her fur is not smooth or particularly soft; she never purrs. She just prowls the barn, snatches the food they bring to take it away and eat somewhere, and stares at them with her flat green eyes, mistrusting and cagey. They don't even name her, because what's the point?

But sometimes Abbie sneaks to the barn without Jenny in tow to account for it. Sits down near the door and talks, little unimportant bits about her routines and grades and Jenny and fosters and things she doesn't have and things she'd like to have; and sometimes, after a while, the nameless cat will come out of the darkness and sit by her knee, and maybe listen.

She disappears as soon as snow melts, of course. Jenny's bereaved and Abbie's resigned, but for years after, when things are bad, Abbie sometimes dreams about green eyes in the dark and warm solid weight by her leg, and breathes easier in her sleep.


	3. The Singing Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenny looks at her, intent and still, and says, "Come on, sister mine. Are we doing it?"

The moon is hanging low over the dark, still waters. Abbie could've never imagined any forest to be as utterly still as this one. Not a whisper in the branches, not a sound, not a rustle. The moon is silver and heavy and smooth, the moon is a coin left forgotten, and the water is painted bright. Jenny looks at her, intent and still, and says, "Come on, sister mine. Are we doing it?"

Abbie looks at her and swallows, and nods instead of speaking. They undress each other under the moonlight, chaste and quiet, and Abbie just thinks, I was always the eldest. I helped you get dressed for school and brushed your hair, and now here you are, ready to lead me down.

Jenny smiles at her, a quicksilver sliver of teeth, and it's been so long, so long. Since they've been co-conspirators, in on a secret joke, and the world could scare them with nothing. So long, but maybe - maybe again.

Abbie smiles back and takes Jenny's hand, Jenny's warm narrow palm. They look at each other, different bodies and different stories and different scars, made alike by the moon and the silence, and Abbie trusts Jenny to lead them into the darkness and out again. To salvage something out of this godforsaken mess – all for something she'd have forbidden herself to even contemplate believing several years ago, for something she _wants_.

(For somebody who wouldn't be taken from her this time, for kind hands and a smirking mouth and a soft voice.)

They step into the water as one, and the water is cold and weightless and molten and shining and dark, so dark.

Jenny says, sing-song and incongruous, "Three, two, one, I am going to seek", and Abbie laughs out loud, surprised and delighted, and when the water closes over their heads, she is not afraid.


	4. Ave Maria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The turkey's burnt, the pie's flat and tastes weirdly, the gravy's thin: desire, of course, rarely equals success.

Jenny hates cooking. She _can_ cook - simple stuff, things that come out of cans and containers, things she can mix and heat and fry and boil, but she hates to. Corbyn tried to teach her to love it, one of the countless things he tried to cram into their (as she knows now) limited time they had together, but cooking just makes her think of _having_ to cook for herself, of having nobody to take care or pay attention. Food is survival, and survival is something she understands keenly, but understanding doesn't equal love.

This Thanksgiving, though. In the world taken over by the chaos of supernatural (and Jenny always _knew_ , but knowledge apparently doesn't equal acceptance), and in the bright chaos of streets and houses and people after the organized quiet of the asylum, Thanksgiving has to _mean_ something, and Jenny tries to recapture it. So she makes the turkey, and she makes the pie, and she goes out to buy pretty napkins and digs out Abbie's decent china, and she tries to make her every move count. To fill it with her fierce, unexpected desire to have her world be whole again.

The turkey's burnt, the pie's flat and tastes weird, the gravy's thin: desire, of course, rarely equals success. She's disappointed but not surprised, and watches Abbie's face for the tilted eyebrow, pursed lips, disapproval and disappointment. Mad Jenny, little Jenny, not up to her task.

Abbie chews, swallows, smiles. Abbie says: "Thank you." Abbie says: "Happy Thanksgiving."

Abbie says: "I missed you."

Abbie, Jenny thinks (and knowledge, sometimes, equals love), understands.


	5. Want It All Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Like you could keep me this way," Jenny says, understanding dawning. "Like I never left."

It takes Jenny some time to notice.

Admittedly, they're in the middle of the slowly encroaching Apocalypse, and she has other things on her mind. Besides, it starts out so slowly and naturally that she feels she can be excused for not paying any attention for a while.

At first, the things that appear after she drops her backpack on the floor of Abbie's guest bedroom make total sense. A toothbrush. A (slightly worn) towel. An (indecently soft) bathrobe. A set of (olive green) pajamas. A set of linens (probably Abbie's). 

Then it starts getting - weird. A coffee cup with a picture of overfed cat on it, its rim chipped next to the handle. A battered computer table and a worn chair to go with it, both appearing in her room overnight without any acknowledgment from Abbie. Several tattered paperbacks on the bookshelf: Jenny checks them and finds them to be so familiar, Watership Down and Pride and Prejudice and Wind in the Willows. Tank tops and jeans materialising in her wardrobe, good quality and nice shape, but just - not new. A picture of her and Corbin on the table, in a worn wooden frame. A cup of uneven pencils.

Jenny doesn't know what to make of it. She's used to living out of her bag, and the absence of things doesn't bother her, but this slow accumulation does, due to the sheer randomness of it. It might be gifts, Abbie trying to buy her affection, but who buys one's affection with used things? 

It might be a veiled insult, a sly dig at her dependence on Abbie, and at the lack of possessions, and Jenny latches on it for a while, but then lets go. For one thing, Abbie's anger is always direct and vocal, they never had to be passive-aggressive at each other. For another, Jenny's so tired of being angry at Abbie, for whatever transgression; she won't go inventing new reasons.

She waits for things to make sense on their own (more books; more clothes; an afghan for the bed; a set of scented candles, one candle half-burnt). They don't. 

Then one day they drag themselves home from a fight with some crazy thing in a forest, too many teeth and too many claws, both exhausted and scratched all to hell and covered in leaves and mud, and when Jenny limps to her room to pick up her bathrobe, there's a toy rabbit on her bed.

She catches her breath, then picks him up and looks closer: it's not a toy of her childhood, but close enough the intent is obvious.

She takes it instead of what she came for, limps back out, and, despite her best intentions, the question comes out as "What the fuck?"

Abbie - blanches, there's no other word for it. She says, instead of explanations or denials, and almost (Abbie!) stammers it: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I won't anymore. You can throw out everything, I won't...", and, whoa, Jenny thinks.

She makes herself sound quiet, aiming for 'soothing' and landing somewhere around 'gruff'. "Hey, it's not - I just don't underestand, Abbie."

Abbie looks at her, and then squares her shoulders, and says: "It's - it's really stupid. It's all this magical shit's getting to me, I'm just. You disappeared so quickly, last time. I blinked, and you were not in my life anymore, and I couldn't get you back. I had you, and then I hadn't. "And now I have you again, and you can disappear just as easily, and I'm just trying - I'm trying to pretend you've always been here. Like I could - "

"Like you could keep me this way," Jenny says, understanding dawning. "Like I never left."

Abbie nods, miserable and quiet now, and Jenny looks at her, and at the worn toy in her hand (she called her rabbit Mr. Serious, and told secrets to him, and she and Abbie slept with him snuggled between them, ages five, ages six, ages seven, ages eight), and thinks of all the comfortable, familiar, used things in her room, of this illusion Abbie spent weeks trying clumsily to craft, of Abbie trying to fit her into her life backwards. It's pathetic and weird and sweet and too late and so - 

"Hey," she says, and smiles at Abbie, and it almost feels right, "do you think you could find some pictures of me and you, too?"

Abbie's face, in return, is worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to somebraveapollo for the meta, and to brigdh for the prompt ♥


	6. Farewell Blues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She sends him messages in his dreams.

She sends him messages in his dreams: red fox fur in the midnight grass, pale blades of moonlight, slow whispers of leaves and branches. She tells him,  _Jeremy plans to..._  and he murmurs back in ripples on the still dark water, _do_ _you truly think he's still Jeremy, dearest?_

 _Always_ , she says, _always, for he is mine to claim._

He slips between raindrops and fractures into light in the falling water, free and unfettered, a gift of her dreamland. He says,  _do you think we shall die after, you and me?_

_Why should we,_ she says, and the water sparkles on the fox ear _, who bound us?_

_You bound me, and was bound in turn, it seems,_ and the water steams away, free, catches himself in a cobweb, in a net.  _When we're done with the end of the days, should the days not be done with us, as well?_

_I don't want them to,_ she whispers, a fox into a bird now, the bird into a whisper, the whisper into starlight.

_I don't, either. I want to show you..._ but there's no lying in the dream, and so, as he bursts free of the web, falls into a leaf, burrows into a root _, I want you to see it, dearest. So many wondrous things, so wild; what you could do with this century!_

_I will_ , she says, and grows into the midnight grass.

_It pains me to leave you caged in this house,_ he says into the earth, into the soil, into the grass.

_I've left myself there, love. Isn't it too late to cry rescue, anyway?_ the grass razor-edged now, amused, brittle.

_I was thoroughly educated on the topic, I believe. I am... I do regret._

_I don't._

She grows into a flower, into a bush, into a tree, into a woman, and he follows suit.

_Take my hand, please._

_Time to go._


End file.
